That was good work in your studio. Conservative, but well-crafted and thorough.” These words gave me pause: it’s not often I’m labeled as conservative.
This judgment was passed by one of my colleagues at the College of Architecture after the end-of-semester review of the student design work in my third-year undergraduate studio. I welcomed the approval of my associate, pleased that the hard work of the talented students in my class was recognized. It was a fitting end to the semester.
In a design school, the end of semester reviews are tense times, both for students who are being evaluated, and for their design tutor, who is also being judged by his or her peers. Did I teach effectively? Could I have done better, pushed the students harder? Was the work better or worse than last year? How did it compare with work from other sections of the same class taught by different faculty?
These concerns and comparisons are in the minds of most faculty as they listen to critics dispassionately analyze the student work done under their direction, exposing its flaws, occasionally praising its successes. An architectural design jury isn’t a venue for the faint-hearted, but it prepares students for some of the cut-and-thrust activity of architectural practice, where ideas are constantly challenged by clients, planners, and citizens, and where egos must develop thick skins to survive.
As a practitioner as well as an academic I’m used to having my ideas and designs publicly criticized in urban design “charrettes,” intensive four to eight day community design workshops. These are good forums for gaining community consensus about design and planning issues, but it’s not uncommon to have one’s hard work harshly criticized by members of the public who have little grasp of the issues involved. I bite my tongue, put a smile on my face and start the process of education all over again.
My students survived their test, and even acquitted themselves honorably. In some cases I confess to little glows of pride as certain individuals did extremely well. At the end of the review, as is customary, the critics — mostly practicing architects and planners from the Carolinas — summed up their feelings about the work. One of their conclusions came as a surprise to the students.
“Several student projects are better that what we see from some licensed architects,” was one such comment. This is a clear indictment of the quality of work produced by our profession. Would a medical student expect to wield a scalpel more effectively than an experienced surgeon? Hardly.
Part of the reason for this surprising judgment is that the problem involved the design of new buildings to fit sensitively into an existing urban context, a design challenge that hasn’t been met successfully by many architects in recent decades. Senior designers in many firms were trained in the doctrines of modernism, which placed more value on the aesthetics of individual buildings than the ensemble of the city. The results of this misconceived priority are everywhere in Charlotte and other cities, with buildings that turn their backs on the public spaces of the street, or create jarring relationships with older, more gracious structures.
While things are improving, old habits die hard. Just look at the banal convention center hotel rising against our skyline, its reflective glass skin an outworn cliche, already dated 20 years ago. And I’ve set forth in a previous column my disdain for the reactionary clunkiness of the Hearst Tower, one of the worst buildings in the city.
One of my urban design colleagues has a slogan that she and her students use to critique themselves during the development stages of a design project. Based on James Carville’s mantra from Bill Clinton’s first presidential race (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), her refrain says “It’s the street, stupid!”
This keeps us on task. Our primary responsibility in designing buildings in cities is to create good public spaces, and that means good streets. Nothing is more important to a city than vibrant, well-designed streets, our main “public rooms” that are the settings for so many of the rituals of our daily lives. Good street design isn’t a function of traffic engineering. It’s created by the design of the buildings that line the streets, that enclose the space. These “urban walls” can be hostile and self-absorbed, pushing people away, or they can be welcoming and friendly to the the pedestrian.
This is a lesson I drill into my students: it’s our job to repair the city, to make good buildings that put the public spaces first, themselves second. It’s our mission to rectify the mistakes of a previous generation, to give absolute priority to the quality of the city’s streets.
This is what the critics responded to in their comments about the student designs. The students had learned this lesson, some more effectively than older, licensed architects.
But to many, this is a very conservative agenda. The dangerous fantasy of Ayn Rand’s tortured architectural genius in The Fountainhead still holds sway in many minds. And in academia, “conservative” often means dealing with real-world practical issues rather than some esoteric theoretical discourse.
In both these cases, I’m proud to be a conservative. I’m convinced education should be based in the world of real problems, and there’s no more urgent problem than repairing the mistakes previous generations of architects and planners have inflicted on our cities. And I’m tired of the tedious dogma of architectural genius, where the weirder the form, the greater the applause from architectural insiders.
Making a good building is hard. Making good cities is harder, but it becomes easier if you just remember: “It’s the streets, stupid!” *
This article appears in May 8-14, 2002.
